Clinical specimen processing devices for processing clinical specimens, such as a blood smear sample forming device for preparing a smear sample of a blood specimen, a blood analyzing device for analyzing a blood specimen, a urine analyzing device for analyzing a urine specimen and a stool analyzing device for analyzing a stool specimen, have been widely known. In the event of an error in such a clinical specimen processing device, it is necessary to inform the user or a support center or the like that carries out technical support on the device of the corresponding error. For this reason, a technique by which the occurrence of an error is informed to the support center or the like has been proposed (for example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,060).
The above-mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,060 has disclosed a method in which: an analyzing device and a control apparatus are connected to each other through a network, and the analyzing device transmits history information that shows the operation history of the analyzing device to a control apparatus by using an electronic mail so that the control apparatus stores pieces of the history information for respective analyzing devices. With this arrangement, the technician in the support center is allowed to confirm the stored history information through the control apparatus so that the technician is allowed to recognize the state of the analyzing device without the necessity of asking for a detailed explanation about the analyzing device from the user; thus, it becomes possible to easily carry out the failure recovering operation.
However, in most cases, the above-mentioned clinical specimen processing devices have complex structures, and it sometimes becomes difficult to confirm the state of the device in detail by examining only the history information. In such a case, the support center needs to dispatch a technician to the user's facility or the like in which the clinical specimen processing device is installed, and make the technician examine the status of the clinical specimen processing device on the spot; therefore, much time and time-consuming tasks are required for the failure recovering operation.